Salad Standoff

[City of Mills]

OK I bought this bag of premixed salad over a week ago...after 3 days I hadn't opened the bag yet and I was concerned with how much longer it might be good. I checked the sell-by date and it was May 28. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like salad so I let it be.

I don't want to throw away a perfectly good bag of salad...It's now June 5, and the bag is still in my fridge unopened. The lettuce inside hasn't even begun to brown...what is going on? I'd be open to eating salad now, but i'm afraid of this alien salad. What if it just looks good, but once I open the bag it's all smelly and rotten? I figure I'll throw it away once it rots but it won' rot! And I won't eat it!

Help me out here.

[redqueen]

1. I'd just go on and eat it if it doesn't smell.

But I'm obsessively anti-waste that way.

[Flaxbee]

2. rinse it off if it doesn't smell funky, and put some rice vinegar

(or any kind of vinegar, really, but rice vinegar tastes the best) over the leaves -- vinegar's pH kills lots of cooties. I have a salad-spinner, and whenever I open a bag of salad or chop up a head of lettuce, I'll first rinse it in water, then a bit of vinegar.